I Never Divorced You

Thank you for your sweet WhatsApp message this morning. I received it with great excitement. But then again I have enjoyed the others you have sent me in the past month, which, if I think about it, would be considered odd. Nay, even perverse! No, I don't mean it like that. Please let me explain.

When I left our marital home so many years ago, I was furious with you. I had given you nearly twelve years of my life, but felt I had nothing to show for it. Three births had only caused my body to sag in lots of places, especially my large breasts which had drooped towards my navel. In the shower I now had to hold them up to get the undersides clean. That was not how you found them. I felt the looseness of my body was your fault. Had it not been that I had given birth not once, not twice, but thrice, my body would still be firm and attractive, I told myself. Now I needed to keep as much of me to be covered to save eyes from seeing and mouths twisting in distaste at an old woman's saggy body. We women try to call it nice names like 'decency' and 'sensible dressing', but I am very clear in my mind that modesty is all about the shame of what our once-shapely, appealing bodies have become in womanhood.

I found fault with almost everything you did, or stood for. No matter that we had built a three bedroomed house, or that we had our children in private schools. I probably thought you would be like my father, a thoroughly good man who had no guile. He was very neat person in his habits, who had never wronged anybody knowingly. Why should I have expected you to mirror my father? Not even my brothers (of whom I have five) took after him in every respect. Each is different in his own way, so why I expected you to treat me the way my father did, I have no idea!

I flung angry words at you in my frustration and spread stories of your 'infidelities with many women'. In truth I only had "women's intuition" to support my words; I had not a single shred of evidence to support my theories. Today I could call them wild theories but at the time I felt thoroughly justified.

I took the children with me, away from you, in order to hurt you. I have no idea how you found out where I lived for one day you simply showed up with gifts for the kids. Nothing for me, which was no great surprise; I probably would have thrown it out. Truth be told, I only stopped myself throwing out the kids' presents because it would hurt them, but that is what I wanted more than anything else. When I moved to a different place you found us again; even at the third place you found us out. One day I will want you to tell me how you knew where to find us.

Today I marvel at some of my actions. When you wanted us to talk it over I insisted that I was ready to "forgive you all that you had done" to me. How did I expect you to swallow that? Is it that I didn't know that both of us contributed to the breakup of our marriage? Was it that I wanted the talks to fail? When you told me that such a strategy was not a winning one, and that I should go back to the drawing board, should I have been surprised? Instead I only thought you stubborn and hardheaded.

In a frenzy I found a job with a private school and moved out of the government Teachers' Service Commission. I sought out rich parents who would pay me to give their children private tuition. I made so much money that I gave our children a good life without needing your input. Whatever you gave seemed paltry and insufficient. I became (probably justifiably) very proud of my accomplishments.

Many nights, especially on weekends I missed your particular brand of lovemaking. I would remember how you taught me, when very pregnant, to lie on my back while you swung my leg (the one nearest you) over your hip opening me up to you. You pushed your groin towards mine while your leg was thrown over mine, and entered me sort of from the side. You called it the "scissors style". You would pleasure me for a long time without any strain on my swollen tummy. You told me it was easier for you too, not having to support yourself. I enjoyed it when your hands were free to play with my heavy breasts as you fucked me roundly. I could never get enough of you. So as I lay in my bed alone on those nights I longed for you to take me again.

Once or twice a man who had been chasing after me for months took me out. I was expecting a satisfying bout but he fired his balls into my depths after what seemed like a few minutes, leaving me in the lurch. I regretted letting him take me to bed, as it only let me yearning more for you! Still I succumbed to another man's blandishments, only to end up being let down again.

Yet when you wrote me an email describing how we could meet secretly so that you can help me "douse the fires" in my loins I took umbrage at your words. I felt that you were cheapening me because at the time I was coming up for an appointment as junior pastor in the church I had fled to. "What if the Overseer got wind of such words?" my panicked mind posed. I deleted that email so quickly so that no chance existed for anyone in the church leadership to come across such words. That must be because they were correct, each one of them!

When you moved to court with a divorce petition, I vowed to fight it tooth and nail. You astonished me with the plea you filed; there was no way, the court would deny you, if you could prove only half of the grounds you had cited. In my frustration I told the lawyer found for me by my cousin that my ex-husband was involved with other women and we would fight his petition on those grounds. My lawyer went along with my insistence, knowing full well that according to the law adultery was grounds for granting divorce.

During the hearings, I felt the court could only have compassion on me, a woman, and throw the petition out. After all the man had not lived up to his vows of being in our marriage "in times of plenty, in times of scarcity, times of ease or of hardship". How could anybody not sympathise with a woman in my position, one who had been treated so badly? I marvel now that a fully qualified lawyer went along with my ignorance, knowing full well that we were supplying the eighth reason for granting the divorce, helping you rather than hindering. But I was so busy in my work that I gave myself no time to read the law concerning marriage. If I had done so, I would have seen the folly of my stand. But why did my lawyer not advice me? Did she care little, knowing that I would still pay her fees whichever way the divorce went? Probably.

I was astonished that my lawyer did not tell me of the judgement date, until the very morning. So I tried to get leave from my headmistress in order to rush to court in time, in which enterprise I failed. I was told of the judgement that the court had granted the divorce. Why did they not see my plight? Why give that man free rein to marry another woman in my place, I screamed at my lawyer. She merely looked at me pityingly, and told me that was the court's decision. With a greedy lick of her lips, she asked me if I wanted to appeal. I could see no reason why that would bring a different result and shook my head, mutely.

I cried and cried at night in my room yet did not want the children to find out what had happened. Your second-born son, however, overcame all the barriers I thought I had set up, as anybody who knows him would have expected him to do. One evening he confronted me with the copies of your plaint that I had hidden deep in my drawers. No amount of drama could spare me, nor hide the facts any longer. By his actions he exposed the divorce to his brother and sister, and I could not deny it.

It left me feeling exposed and vulnerable and my response was to work even harder, teaching, giving extra tuition and enrolling in a Master's program at which I found that I excelled, to my surprise. This massaged my hurt feelings over the fact that you disliked me enough to push through with a divorce.

I expected to hear that you had married, but year followed year without such news. I consoled myself and told my women friends that you must be finding women to provide you with cheap sex. "Men are not like us. They cannot survive without fucking," I maintained. In time I got so satisfied with my theory that when my son came home with the news that his father had posted on Facebook that he was going to wed, I was shattered. It irked me that you were marrying someone from a foreign country, thereby showing me that you wanted someone as different from me as possible. This gave me fresh hurt, that you had rejected me, along with anything that could be connected to me.

If I heard that either of the boys had been to see you, I ranted at them that they were condoning your rejection of us, but since they were over 18, I had no control over that situation. I have no idea what you had given them, so that they never saw the situation with my eyes. Of course, now they were adults, with the ability to make up their own minds but I could not, despite all my education, free myself from the notion that they echoed your thoughts.

My weekly longings continued to haunt me, and I wished you would write something conciliatory so that I could respond positively. But you never did. In my mind's eye, I saw you between the thighs of your new wife, giving rise to fresh feelings of resentment. My Master's degree was in counseling psychology but I could not avail myself of the benefits I conferred on my clients. Another abortive case of 'doctor, heal thyself'! Seven years passed as I swung between these extremes.

Then last month, one morning, from the blues you came to visit "us" as I thought at the time. You greeted me in a bear hug which threw so many switches in my system that I was fired up in ways I thought my body had abandoned. As we chatted over breakfast with your daughter you looked so desirable that I had to rebuke myself severally that I was now a servant of the Lord; I should have won over such feelings, surely!

Another morning you burst upon us unexpectedly and as it happened I answered the door. You folded me into a hug like the last time, firing off all those connections again. Instead of leaving it at that you nonchalantly brought your mouth to mine and kissed me. Hungrily. I felt a warm fluid seep out of my cunt while still standing there in your arms. I wanted you to take me to bed and fuck me senseless, only that our daughter was in. What would she think of me? Your dark good looks that morning and afternoon caused me to keep having to drag myself back to sobriety. I swear that if you had dragged me to my bedroom and kissed me again I would have thrown all caution to the winds and fucked you, mindless of any consequences.

When we talked of possible plans, I found myself again making demands of you that you must visit my father and perform a traditional ceremony to declare me your wife as well your current one, so that I would have a burial place. I have no idea what you thought of me and my ideas, not least because polygamy is against the law.

The purpose of this letter is to appeal to you to forgive me all my contrary behavior from the days when we lived together as man and wife, through the period before, during the divorce proceedings and afterwards. I confess that I do not understand myself fully, but if you can make a supreme effort to understand my indecision and take me into your life as your wife, I will endeavor to act sensibly. If I veer off, I solemnly promise that I will listen to you when you call me out.